47 Comments:

Where and when was this Marcel interview done?

Notice how Wilmot's son describes the light seen by his mum and dad, a description that differs quite a bit from that in the newspaper account.

Marcel insisted it was not from this earth. Amazing deduction (!), but one, I suspect, put into his head by you know who. Also the narrator is quite wrong to say it took all day to get from Roswell to the ranch.

Good illustration of the unreliability of taking testimony from decades after the event. Tony Bragalia please note.

The video comes from an airing of "In Search Of" from the early 1980s when we were grabbing such things via a VHS machine.

When In Search Of got to Marcel for the show is anyone's guess I suppose, but it had to be early in the 1980s or even late 1970s.

One can either accept Marcel's account as made-up or as a true recollection.

Did Stan Friedman really instill in Marcel all that he (Marcel) is imparting in the video clip?

That seems to me to be a stretch, but not impossible.

Officer Marcel may have come to believe what he's saying, but his remarks are a construction created in his mind, from contact with Friedman and others, and all the input he was subjected to by the Roswell brouhaha after 1978; that is, he came to believe the stories (and mythology) generated by the UFO/ET crowd.

Why I find his statement a bit iffy is his comment that the piece of metal he picked up was thin, like the paper in a cigarette pack but couldn't be bent.

Didn't he and Marcel Jr. (among others) say that the "metal" piece, when folded, came back to its original shape?

I try to take the debris remarks as hyperbole, but certain Roswell Dream Team members (you may know whom I mean) insist that the debris was, in fact, memory metal and studied by Battelle scientists and/or staffers.

And they have circumstantial evidence to back up their findings, yep.

So I'm in a state of flux about the whole thing.

Was there debris, really? Did it bend, or was it unbendable?

Was it indestructable, or able to be packaged up and shipped in cartons to AF facilities?

Regardless of what happened at Roswell, and who said what and what their words mean, etc, the fact is that the crash-site IS a long way from Roswell.

And, back in '47, it may well have taken a long time to get there, albeit not neccessarily all day, of course.

Having made the journey (the latest in February 2011) on a number of occasions, it's - even on today's roads - about a 2-hour drive from the base-side of town.

And, the last twenty/thirty minutes or so are torturous! You really do need an all-terrain vehicle (which, fortunately, the people with me had), as its very wild, up and down, no real roads - even today! Then you have to get to the site itself, equally remote on the huge ranch.

So, in other words, Roswell's tie (the town, I mean) to the story is actually quite tennuous. The site is MILES from Roswell, a long and bumpy journey, and really, the only reason Roswell can claim fame off the affair is because the debris (of whatever!) was taken to Roswell, and then it hit the headlines, courtesy of the base.

1. The narrator tells us that it took all day to get to the crash site, yet Marcel says he drove out from the town at 3.30 to 4 pm. I am positive he did not drive during the night!

2. The story told by the Wilmot's son differs from that in the press. Nothing "came down" that night and there is no connection between what Wilmot saw and the debris on the ranch. The dates differ considerably.

3. The atomic bomb expertise of Marcel and his bomb squad has zilch to do with the case.

4. Gersten is talking nonsense. There is no FBI record of anything found at Roswell being an army kite, and the "declassified" document shown is certainly not the Dallas FBI memo (which is the ONLY FBI document ever produced on the case). What document is Gersten talking about anyway? Where is it now?

5. Marcel is clearly relating things put into his head in the late 1970s, not what he first discovered in '47. And he actually realised the stuff was "not from this earth". Ha Ha. Do viewers really swallow such twaddle?

I am not trying to be too critical and damning. I am pointing out that this recording has all the hallmarks of being grossly sensationalised, as usual.And 99% of the viewers will accept it at face value (because they have no knowledge of the case) when it is anything but.

It is the sort of thing we have to live with, and it is plain fiction. All right, no mention is made of bodies (thank goodness) but had the interviews taken place 10-15 years later, there might well have been!

"Didn't he and Marcel Jr. (among others) say that the "metal" piece, when folded, came back to its original shape?"Greetings,

In fact Richie, in the National Geographic TV show about Roswell (link after), Jesse Marcel Junior interviewed said and explained that he never seen such foils with memory form properties.I have just the link available in French about that TV show, but you probably well know and will recognize and find it in English in order to verify by yourself.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uOLiZkMrL0

If memory serves, The verb "bend" was first introduced by Marcel Sr in The Roswell Incident. He said a soldier who had tested the material said they couldn't bend it. Marcel understood this to mean, based I guess on the material he handled, that it would not retain its fold, not that it was unbendable being rigid, but that it wouldn't retain the 'bending' from being folded. It was thus 'unbendable'.

CDA: "5. Marcel is clearly relating things put into his head in the late 1970s, not what he first discovered in '47."

One of the very very few quotations of Mack Brazel in the newspapers at the time was that Marcel had said it was unlike anything the army or navy had. This might very well be an accurate description of what Marcel said because of the mention of the navy, to which Marcel had once been assigned, but was unlikely to have been known by either Brazel or the reporter.

It is not "unearthly", but it does show Marcel not in agreement with the weather balloon/radar target story -- in 1947, long before he was ensorcelled by the Svengalish Stanton Friedman of your imagining.

Page 66 of the Roswell Incident, the response to the question "What was especially interesting about the material?"

"Now by bend, I mean crease. It was possible to flex this stuff back and forth, even to wrinkle it, but you could not put a crease in it that would stay, nor could you dent it at all. I would have to almost describe it as a metal with plastic properties"

Notice that Brazel and Marcel tried to make the object into a kite. They failed, but a kite was clearly on their minds at the time. Why?

I assume Marcel kept quiet at Ft Worth not because of any imposed military secrecy, but because he was anxious to avoid looking foolish, i.e. having gone to all that trouble of gathering up loads of common balloon, tinfoil and sticks material.

Of course when Marcel spoke in 1979-80 the 'story' had a totally different emphasis.

You may underestimate Friedman's persuasive powers. When someone receives a packet of printed papers from a man who ALWAYS describes himself as a nuclear physicist (and remember Marcel was in the atomic bomb squad), pushing the case for ETH, don't you think he would easily get converted? Also Marcel had already appeared in a documentary ETH-biased movie in which Friedman was technical consultant. (Late 1979).

Roswell isn't as fascinating to me as it is to others. Generally, I leave it alone and there are enough real experts on the case for it to do just fine without my own ill-informed thoughts. In fact, reading the comments reinforces my reluctance to muck in with those who know so much about the subject.

Caveats aside, this is the one video that caught my attention a few years ago and leaves me with judgement suspended and cognitive dissonance buzzing in my ears. He says what he says and it's hard to re-interpret his words as meaning balloon debris, conventional detritus or equivocation.

I realise that intuition has little place in the comments, but he doesn't seem to be at peace with the enormity of what he's stating. This isn't to suggest he doubted his recollection specifically, but perhaps he also lived with the cognitive dissonance? After all, if one of us experienced the discovery of a crashed exotic craft, could we maintain certainty when all subsequent voices denied the event?

A number of seminal psychology studies during the 50s used stooges in classes to pick the 'wrong' object from a selection. They were testing the conformity of people in groups. Crutchfield was the author of one study and Milgram is a rather clichéd reference and yet helps to explain the general gist of my fuzzy intuition on the video.

One could easily assume he's telling the truth, as it really was, not as he mistakenly remembered or pulled from the Svengali-like machinations of Stan Friedman.

That said, one has to be cautious about his account, as he let it sit fallow for over 30 years when one would think such a monumental event as that which he says he participated in would have brought a greater response, something more energetic, excited.

He's a little too calm.

I don't think Marcel was inclined to be a grand-stander, but even a modified, former intelligence guy would surely be more animated if he really thought he had touched extraterrestrial materials.

The video is grist for a psychological analysis.

But no one seems up to it, or cares, as they, like you and me, see the effort as futile in light of all the self-promoted expertise that infuses others in the UFO camp.

The cards that Kevin, Stan and the other Roswell mythologizers were dealt are pretty embarrassing.

Because we know that the stuff that Marcel picked up was basically foil paper, string, and sticks (that's exactly what the witnesses CONTEMPORANEOUSLY describe), the mystery mongers had to come up with a whopper:

They try to sell the story by saying (with a straight face, yet!) that the the stuff was actually Space Foil and Space Sticks.

One can imagine the Army's joy when they were trying to come up with their instant cover story:

"Thank God this stuff looks JUST LIKE a balloon and target array! Whew, this is gonna be easy!"

Unfortunately the star player in the Roswell story ruined everything for the myth makers. He said ON THREE OCCASIONS that the stuff in the photos with him is the SAME STUFF he picked up on the ranch.

Even the rabid Roswell defenders know that the stuff in the photos is not Space Foil or Space Sticks. It's dumb old regular foil and balsa wood sticks.

So how do they get around this problem? By unsung the incredible power of ROSWELL RATIONALIZATION!

Using this little understood power, Kevin has decided that Marcel is wrong when he says that the stuff he is pictured with in the photos is the same stuff he picked up at the ranch. Eventually Marcel was finally coached to NOT SAY THAT ANYMORE!

The comments brought up an old question.Stanton Friedman's name came up with an acquaintance who saw him at a UFO Conference and "he was selling books out of the trunk of his car" according to this person. Why is he no longer an employed physicist ( or is he?)and when did he leave the field? This has always struck me as very odd. I had never seen him introduced as SF who is a scientist with such and such. It's always in the past tense in very general terms. Can someone name a specific project he was associated with? Who does he work for now?

Here is a typical blurb.."Back in 1955 Stanton received his BSc. and MSc. Degrees in physics from the University of Chicago. After that he worked as a nuclear physicist for 14 years, employed by several large companies with GM, Aerojet General, GE being a few of them. Stanton claims to have worked on several classified projects involving nuclear powered rockets and space propulsion systems. "

According to this, his career ends in 1969? Something does not compute.

From his website:"Nuclear Physicist-Lecturer Stanton T. Friedman received his BSc. and MSc. Degrees in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 and 1956. He was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas working in such highly advanced, classified, eventually cancelled programs as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and various compact nuclear powerplants for space and terrestrial applications."

Again, 1969 is the end date, according to him. There is something odd about this. I plan to check it out.

As best I can tell from the text, Marcel said "one of the boys" said they couldn't bend it. Marcel appears to have interpreted that to mean a material which was unable to hold a crease or fold, such as he had found.

We just have this text, not a transcript of what I think was a telephone interview, so...

"Nothing esoteric there."

Pretty much. Couldn't burn it with a Zippo. No big deal.

Like Marcel though, I find the parchment-like material interesting. What did he mean? I know of three things called 'parchment'. One is a paper used by chefs and is the unlikely meaning. Some tracing paper is called 'parchment' and comes in various weights. He might have meant that, perhaps using it at some time in his career regarding maps. The third is most interesting: animal skin. If the interviewer had bothered to clarify, we might have here a really good match with Sally Strickland's description of the material.

CDA: "Don...Notice that Brazel and Marcel tried to make the object into a kite. They failed, but a kite was clearly on their minds at the time. Why?"

Not quite. It was on Brazel's mind

""At first I thought it was a kite, but we couldn't put it together like any kite I ever saw," he said. "It wasn't a kite."" (Kellahin's byline AP).

Nothing about "their" minds. After a closer inspection, Brazel says it wasn't a kite. If it wasn't a kite, then it wasn't a rawin target. There is no evidence here that Marcel thought it was a kite, just Brazel, but then he changed his mind.

CDA: "I assume Marcel kept quiet at Ft Worth not because of any imposed military secrecy, but because he was anxious to avoid looking foolish, i.e. having gone to all that trouble of gathering up loads of common balloon, tinfoil and sticks material."

He was ordered to investigate, and to transport the material to Ramey's office, therefore there can be no embarrassment. Marcel was under orders. His ass was covered. That's all he had to consider. If there is anyone to be embarrassed it would be at whomevers desk this particluar buck stopped.

CDA: "...don't you think he would easily get converted?"

What makes you think Marcel required conversion?

I'll point out two things:1) According to the tale, it was Marcel's comment about flying saucers to his ham radio buddies that Friedman heard about and pursued. If Marcel was referring to the Roswell incident as a flying saucer story (as I recall the tale), it is what got Friedman's attention.

2) Marcel knew more about the Roswell incident than Friedman, Randle, you, and I combined. He didn't need frickn' coaching.

"In fact Richie, in the National Geographic TV show about Roswell (link after), Jesse Marcel Junior interviewed said and explained that he never seen such foils with memory form properties.I have just the link available in French about that TV show, but you probably well know and will recognize and find it in English in order to verify by yourself.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uOLiZkMrL0"

That is correct Gilles. I asked him this question myself and he said he saw an I-beam and other pieces but no memory metal.

Why can't you simply take Major Marcel at his word? The gentleman was no slouch as evidenced by his important position. Sometimes the right answer is the most obvious and that is the man is speaking the truth.

If Marcel had really been privy to the greatest secret on earth, do you really believe he would have kept it to himself for 3 decades?

Think of all the books, articles, TV shows, documentaries ad infinitum that had gone on for all this time. Think of the great flaps of 1947, 1952, 1957 and NICAP, APRO in the 1960s, the campaign for congressional hearings and such.

Of course it is all supposed to be part of the grand conspiracy/cover-up thesis that Marcel and others could never reveal the great secret to anyone. At least that is what the ETHers would have us believe.

So I say, without any hesitation, that yes, Marcel WAS coached by STF in 1978-79 to become an ET believer, that in 1947 he had no such idea, while in the intervening years he likely pondered the matter over from time to time but dismissed it. Hence his prolonged silence.

I'm unable for the moment to find the TV show and interview in English (anyway, I first saw and hear it in english), but in the French version, the extract is in the part 3 at around 6'30'' : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBY_K_OGCFEDunno if you hear Jesse Marcel enough due to the french "translator" :(

CDA: "If Marcel had really been privy to the greatest secret on earth, do you really believe he would have kept it to himself for 3 decades?"

Don't even begin the rhetoric with me..."greatest secret on earth" my ass.

"So I say, without any hesitation, that yes, Marcel WAS coached by STF in 1978-79 to become an ET believer, that in 1947 he had no such idea, while in the intervening years he likely pondered the matter over from time to time but dismissed it. Hence his prolonged silence."

And there folks is an example of belief without proof. Pure faith. A bit of religious dogma from the Church of Skepticism.

CDA's point about Marcel's cavalier stance for 30 years, regarding such a monumental event, is well-taken and pertinent.

(The idea that Stanton Friedman brainwashed Marcel is iffy, a stretch that needs something more than it gets with the accusation.)

Your obvious belief that Roswell was a singlar event, Don, bolsters the rightful skepticism about Marcel's laid-back position for three decades, so I'd be a bit more cautious about dismissing CDA's commonsense questioning of that part of the Marcel/Roswell story.

Rich: "CDA's point about Marcel's cavalier stance for 30 years, regarding such a monumental event, is well-taken and pertinent."

That's nice, but what does it have to do with my comments -- since he addressed me directly, I assume CDA was in fact replying to what I wrote.

I didn't know there was a "monumental event". Some ET advocates might think it was such a thing, but all I see is a minor news story that got the attention of reporters and editors for a few hours one evening in 1947.

CDA knows I am not a Roswell ET advocate. I have written nothing (ever) about "monumental" or "greatest story" re Roswell.

I commented on the evidence Marcel didn't believe the balloon/rawin story in 1947, and the evidence that he had his own ideas about UFOs before Friedman. I also demonstrated how CDA's kite idea cuts both ways.

So, CDA, respond to my points if you wish, but don't use me as an opportunity to witness testify to your religous beliefs.

No. CDA runs the greatest story crap on me, and I refuse to fall for it. What else can be made of what I wrote?

"That point about what Marcel intuited -- that Roswell was something more significant than balloon debris -- was the salient point that CDA and I took a punch at."

Excuse me, once again I have to point out that Marcel didn't need to intuit anything. He's not referring to something he read or something he was told. He was actually at the debris site and in Ramey's office -- I think the only person we know of who was at both. He handled the stuff. There is evidence he did not think it was a balloon and rawin target in July 1947 and I presnted it. Take a punch at that, instead.

What I think about it? What is the provenance of the news story with the quotation? That's what I'd like to know. I'd like to hear from people who have done the research, who may have found something about it I haven't. I'd like someone to point out how I misconstrue the story, if I have. I'd like some discussion.

What I get is anti-ET crap.

"Marcel did an about-face it seems, and why exactly, after 30 years of silence?"

Neither you, nor I, nor CDA know anything at all about Marcel during those 30 years. We have no idea what he thought or did. So, you two are making up something for no reason I can imagine.

You both seem offended that Marcel didn't join NICAP or harrass Frank Edwards...that he didn't become a public figure re UFOs, write a book or appear on Edward R Murrows tv show. You seem to think it is a significantly mysterious that he didn't.

If either you or CDA think it important why aren't you doing research in Houma Louisiana? Why are you taking my posts as an opportunity to imply there is something significant about his "silence"?

"Everything else, including the kitchen sink, is not germane, to this one sticking point."

For you, but it is not a sticking point at all for me because I don't have the notion about the 'greatest monumental story' nor to I naturally assume that Marcel rightly ought to have shouted it from the housetops.

If that is what he belived or came to believe, human nature -- the psychological parameters of such a mind-set -- would call for more action than that which he employed.

You can applaud him for not harassing Frank Edwards or shouting from the rooftops that he held ET debris, but you're letting him off the hook. Why?

Marcel came late to his "disclosures" and those disclosures were so subdued as to cause question.

You are making excuses, waywardly, for Marcel's unexplanable behavior.

Again, why?

The simple, common sense, rationally skeptical approach is to wonder why Marcel was so laid-back for so many years if he, indeed, felt he once held ET materials or materials so exotic that their origin was in doubt by him and his son.

It was Stan Friedman who first called it "the greatest story", not me. Unfortunately I don't have the source.

Marcel thought nothing of it in '47. Virtually nothing. We can be certain of this for several reasons:1. He made no written diary notes of the event.2. He took no photos of the debris3. He could not remember the date, even the year.4. He did not keep any of the press reports.5. He at first could not even recall who accompanied him to the site.

I think we can safely conclude the event meant virtually nothing to him. He may have had some ideas about it during the 30-year interval, but we shall never know.

I certainly would not trust anything his son says about it now, as he too has been indoctrinated far too much to be of any use on this point.

Therefore we can legitimately ask: Why did Marcel, when interviewed in 1979, say words to the effect that the craft came from somewhere outside the earth? What caused him to suppose this? He never saw a complete craft anyway, only bits and pieces.

His son likewise. We may assume Marcel jr had no ET thoughts prior to 1979, unless someone can demonstrate otherwise.

So I ask Don: what caused Marcel to suppose he might have picked up pieces of an ET craft? I have suggested a probable answer. What is Don's answer? What is RR's answer?

Presumably Marcel was speaking his real thoughts on the video and not in it just for money and/or publicity.

Rich: "You can applaud him for not harassing Frank Edwards or shouting from the rooftops that he held ET debris, but you're letting him off the hook. Why?"

Do you recall the reason given by Bloecher and McDonald for their paper on the 47 Wave back in 1969? Do you recall all the discussions about the "silence' of Roswell for 30 years? It wasn't just Marcel, not just Roswell, but the entire 47 Wave (with the exception of Kenneth Arnold) that was "silent" for 30 years.

I have an issue with 'Roswell' because rather than leading to the recovery of the 47 Wave by investigators and researchers, it drowned it out.

The 47 Wave is on the other side of the divide created by Keyhoe and Scully. The 'monumental greatest event' for Ufology wasn't the 47 Wave or Roswell, but the Washington DC UFO incident in 1952. Between those -- Keyhoe/Scully and DC, the 47 Wave was forgotten. To echo you above, "Why"?

Marcel's "silence" is not unusual at all to me. It is what I expected. Rhodes, Smith etc *all* went "silent"

"You are making excuses, waywardly, for Marcel's unexplanable behavior."

What excuses? That he chatted with his friends about flying saucers?

"The simple, common sense, rationally skeptical approach is to wonder why Marcel was so laid-back for so many years if he, indeed, felt he once held ET materials or materials so exotic that their origin was in doubt by him and his son."

Never read anything by or about Marcel Jr., so can't comment on him.

I don't know when Marcel concluded the material had to be ET (because he didn't think it could have been made on earth), or really, if he did conclusively. The absence of certainty might explain it.

Or maybe the notion that one would put it into the public domain, that you skeptics assume is the natural behavior, is wrong.

CDA has often been informed that simply because he thinks something is normal and natural, and *should* have happen, doesn't make it so. Allow me to inform you of that about yourself, too.

I'm lawyering your presuppositions. They are not facts, just assumptions without support except you are incredulous things don't happen they way you think they should. You both find your musing self-evident, it seems.

I'm basing my observations on what my psychology background taught me; that is, people act in certain ways when something important or traumatic happens to them.

(I've placed some papers online here and at our other blogs about this early on.)

Marcel's behavior doesn't "compute" as Bruce Duensing might put it.

Why he didn't move his 1947 mind-set to the front burner until after 1978, to answer CDA somewhat, is baffling, but I can't give all the credit for that re-awakening of Marcel's ET belief to influence by Stanton Friedman, alone.

Marcel's views lay dormant for 30 years. Then he comes forward, after Friedman et al. make the case for an ET crash in Roswell.

Is that co-incidence? Perhaps, perhaps, not.

But remember, Don and CDA, that an ET crash was the premise for Roswell in the first place, via Haut's press release and the media headlines.

Did Marcel sit on his belief or experience for 30 years because he knew that no flying disk crashed or was he being silent for military reasons.

I dunno, but his quiet is open to question.

And his public stance, after 1978, is too.

Such musings will not answer the UFO riddle, but it ties in with the video here, and that is all.

Don, I know you fixate on 1947 (maybe up to the 1952 sightings) because they are rather pure -- not cluttered by all the nonsense after that.

But that doesn't mean that Marcel was pure also, because his remembering, in 1978, goes back to 1947.

Something sparked him anew after 1978. What?

Where was that spark in 1947 and immediately afterwards?

That's the psychological question and I'm not sure you ,Don, have expertise in that area.

I assume Smith (pilot EJ Smith?) went silent because of the repercussions of Maury Island in which he was closely involved. Rhodes went silent because his photos were fakes and he felt he had 'done his bit'.

These are my interpretations. You may think differently.

Maury Island was a big part of the 1947 wave, whatever you believe about it. And it certainly got revived in the 50s through a certain Ray Palmer, long, long before Roswell got revived.

The Scandinavian wave of '46 was also a talking point long before Roswell's revival.

CDA "So I ask Don: what caused Marcel to suppose he might have picked up pieces of an ET craft? I have suggested a probable answer. What is Don's answer? What is RR's answer?"

Because he didn't think the material could have been manufactured on earth. That is obviously his reason, CDA. Marcel wasn't a materials scientist. It is just his opinion.

You give your five reasons, but I offered a quotation from Mack Brazel in 1947 that, if accurate, strongly implies Marcel did not believe it was a balloon and kite from the gitgo (and neither did Brazel).

So, the two people we know for certain had handled the debris on the Foster Ranch did not believe it was a balloon/kite. In 1947. When Stanton Friedman was 13 years old.

"But remember, Don and CDA, that an ET crash was the premise for Roswell in the first place, via Haut's press release and the media headlines."

You are taking the phrase in the press release "flying disc" to refer to ET? Why?

Your fellow skeptics will belabor you (where's Gilles?) that "flying disc/saucer" had no explicit meaning in 1947, especially not ET.

If the term had no specific meaning in 1947, then it was the perfect cover story for whatever the army did not wish to reveal -- including a spaceship. But times change.

"That's the psychological question and I'm not sure you, Don, have expertise in that area."

I spent several years in counselling work under supervision of credentialed clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist, working with clients who experienced psychological trauma such as PTSD and abusive family environments.

You make an exquisite point: a captured flying disk didn't necessarily mean an extraterrestrial craft in the time-frame.

That view is thrust backward by me and others, errantly.

The implication may be there but we don't have a clear picture of what the military, media, or the public thought a flying disk was exactly; after all Arnold's event was only newsworthy a few weeks before, and an outer space conjecture was not rampant as it became later on.

But the idea was subliminal surely.

It would have been interesting if someone had asked Marcel what he specifically thought he held in his hands.

Marcel only leaves the impression that he gathered exotic materials.

Was the debris part of a secret army experiment, which kept Marcel silent for so long?

Was the allege disk debris part of something non-extraterrestrial but so new that it left Marcel with questions that he wasn't able to articulate until after 1978, when Friedman and the UFO crowd had imposed an ET patina on the dormant event, giving him an explanation finally?

As for your work with psychological staffers, good for you, but is that qualification for proposing mental etiologies?

(I once swept floors at the University of Detroit's planetarium. Does that make me an expert in astronomy?)

Marcel probably overrates himself in the video when he claims to know about all the US aircraft of the time. Oh really? I doubt very much if he knew anything of the Bell X-2 Chuck Yeager flew in. Marcel knew about atomic bombs but had no need-to-know about experimental aircraft.

Marcel probably realised the debris was mainly balloon material. It was the shattered radar target that baffled him, as well as the 'extras' like maybe the sonobouy. My own view is that he did, very likely, know what he recovered, but had slight doubts that increased over the years, mainly due to all the UFO reports flooding in, and especially when the movies and TV shows appeared.

He simply kept his mouth shut in '47 rather than look foolish. And it had nothing to do with his security oath.

But we can argue this forever. Suffice to say that by 1978-79 Marcel had been 'converted' enough to believe that, yes, maybe he really had seen and picked up ET debris. And naturally his son followed suit. And so on. And I still think STF played a prominent part in this.

Enough said!

As RR admits, 'flying disc' did NOT imply ET craft in '47, but it slowly became so early in '48 with Mantell and Chiles-Whitted.

Rich, my disappointment with this discussion (setting aside that no one arguing with me has addressed the two issues I raised -- and, I was responding on-point with them. I didn't just post out of the blue) is that both you and CDA want to 1)talk about ET 2) want to score points against ET advocates such as Friedman, who I have not read and can't imagine reading.

Except for the Roswell Incident (and a browse through Randles' "The Truth etc" 15 years ago), I have never read a book about Roswell. At most, I've browsed through their indices and appendices, if any, looking for actual information (which means, pretty much, the included "affidavits").

That is how uninterested I am in Roswell, The ET Version.

Over the last few years I've posted here, I have never given you or CDA any indication that I cared anything at all about it.

"The implication may be there but we don't have a clear picture of what the military, media, or the public thought a flying disk was exactly"

In the 1947 material, I found one (1) serious article in a (small town) newspaper during the Wave that discussed ET as a possibility; a reference to spaceships from another planet from an unnamed source, but obviously Meade Layne; and a couple of people described as "Forteans" in the stories who opined on ET and saucers.

We know what the military's opinion was -- what's in the Twining "Memo", which is near identical to the combined AF and Navy intelligence report in December 1948. The report reveals they were interested in 1947 UFO reports in the USA filed *before* Arnold's. Their conclusion was that objects they could not identify and that appeared to be under intelligent control were in the skies over the USA.

What the press thought? Two things. 1) Do you know the story about Trinity and the New York Times? 2) Imagine an editor speaking to his reporters in a staff meeting..."Write something about the saucers like Hal Boyle! Give me something people will read!"

The influence of Boyle on the publics' making a connection between ET and the saucers should not be poo pooed.

"Marcel only leaves the impression that he gathered exotic materials."

He thought he did. He couldn't identify the stuff. Maybe someone else could. I have no problem with Marcel Sr thinking it was exotic. Maybe it was. I can see why he would think it originated off-planet, would appeal to him as a solution.

Given that Marcel wasn't a materials scientist, his opinion is just that, an uninformed opinion. I don't need Friedman jujuing him.

What is going on here, for the youngsters, is that Marcel in 1947 must not think the materials were out of the ordinary, otherwise the skeptics will have to tar him as a psycho, and they'd rather play nice.

To dot the i, since Friedman was 13 and not at the RAAF in 1947, there is no convincing way to argue Marcel was ensorcelled then. And we have some evidence he did not consider the debris "ordinary" in July 1947.

That's why they aren't addressing the Brazel quotation.

Whereas, I just want to know the provenance of that news story.

Rich: "(I once swept floors at the University of Detroit's planetarium. Does that make me an expert in astronomy?)"

Hey. You brought it up.

I once did couple counselling partnered with a Jungian from Switzerland.